Category Archives: poetry

We still love this September poem.

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(I’m reposting this from five years ago. Every September, many, many people still find the poem below on my blog. This fall, for the first time, I am pleased to say I have acquired a purple aster to enjoy for the next couple of months, and have installed it by the front door.)

Only a few years ago did I discover this poem. Being short and packed with autumnal images, it is perfect for a busy time of year, when you don’t want to let the equinox pass unnoticed, but you are canning tomatoes or drying figs or just taking all the walks you can in the crisp air. If you don’t pay attention to the calendar or the TV, you might miss the day.

For months and years I’ve been trying off and on to confirm that its author is Edwina Hume Fallis. New things show up on Internet searches all the time, and today I have seen enough sites that are confident about attributing it to her that I will accept it. Two months ago I couldn’t find two postings of the poem where her name was even spelled right. Most places it is shared as by “Anonymous.”

In the city of Denver, Colorado, Edwina Hume Fallis is especially famous, for her teaching and writing, a toy shop she owned, and her book When Denver and I Were Young. (I did recently contact the Denver public library to see if they had a copy of the poem below in their collection about her; they did not.) She and her sister made toys to use as props in telling stories to kindergarten students, and she did write over 100 poems; maybe this one was in an anthology that is now out of print. Many women bloggers seem to have memorized it in elementary school.

I wonder if any of my readers in the Southern Hemisphere knows of a similar poem that applies to the opposite seasons down there?

SEPTEMBER

A road like brown ribbon,
A sky that is blue
A forest of green with that sky peeping through.
Asters deep purple,
A grasshopper’s call –
Today, it is Summer
Tomorrow is Fall!

-Edwina Hume Fallis

At Pippin’s in 2017, waiting for the aspens to turn.

The pages turn you.

books, poetry, , , ,

YOU TURN THE PAGE

André Derain

“Whenever I see someone reading a book . . . I feel civilization has become a little safer.” Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

You turn the page because you have to know—
because the youthful wizard is in trouble,
because the wife’s about to pack and go,
because you just like living in this bubble
of graceful prose and other people’s ills
and joys, because turning the pages makes
you see things from a new perspective, fills
your mind with more than you, and maybe breaks
your heart or your routine, or breaks apart
what’s rusted shut, or else draws a connection
where you thought there was none. And once you start,
the pages lead you to the intersection
of art and life and your own empathy;
the pages turn you toward humanity.

-Jean L. Kreiling

Jean Kreiling expresses so many of the reasons that we love to read — Did she leave anything out? I do like very much — often, but not constantly! — living in this bubble of graceful prose, even when the bubble doesn’t contain other peoples’ ills and joys. I hope my reading is doing all the positive things the poet sees. I read this poem Sunday afternoon to eleven fellow readers, when our parish women’s book group met on my patio and enjoyed our usual lively discussion of such pleasures. I’m also keeping it tucked in my purse to share with any friend or stranger I might meet, anytime our conversation turns to our latest favorite books.

Peter Kauflin, Once Upon a Time

You are neither here nor there.

poetry,

POSTSCRIPT

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

-Seamus Heaney